In late January, a group of representatives of Bulgarian trading companies supplying fruits and vegetables to LIDL, Auchan, Carrefour, REWE supermarket chains in Bulgaria visited the post-harvest infrastructure facilities of seven large horticultural enterprises in Moldova.
The Bulgarian sales representatives tried to solve a temporary problem: to compensate for the lack of supply of high-quality apples to Bulgarian supermarkets with urgent imports from Moldova. But although the quality, packaging and even the pricing of Moldovan apples suited them, apparently, it will not come to the signing of contracts.
The main obstacle to the supply of Moldovan apples to Bulgaria was too expensive logistics. Potential buyers would have to rent trucks both ways, and there would be no return loading. Potential sellers were also focused only on the sale of apples and did not consider options for the reverse import to Moldova of some Bulgarian products, for example, vegetables or seed potatoes.
It seems that the Bulgarian sales representatives went to Poland afterwards, where, most likely, they purchased apples of similar quality on more attractive logistics terms or at a lower price.
Source: east-fruit.com